Scott reynolds nelson biography definition
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A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters
A fantastic look at over years of financial panics in the United States, from the panic sparked by William Duer's attempt to corner the federal debt market, to, of course, the Wall Street crash.
Nelson mentions in the acknowledgements that the book began after he had written a prescient article, published in Chronicle of Higher Education in October , comparing the current crash to the panic. When some bankers contacted him about where they could find out about earlier panics, he had to admit there was not much out there. That's been my experience as well. Shockingly little has been written about the panics of , , , , , , and , let alone anything comparing them all, despite the fact that these panics fundamentally reshaped the American economy and landscape. Nelson makes a strong case that they were even fulcrum of sorts around which all of early American history turned. For instance, t
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A NATION OF DEADBEATS
A revisionist history of financial collapses in the United States radiating to other parts of the globe, with implications for what really caused the ongoing economic meltdown.
Nelson (Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry: the Untold Story of an American Legend, , etc.) is a professional historian with a nonestablishment focus. The major problem with traditional historic accounts is that they diminish the role of ordinary citizens—i.e., debtors—while overplaying the roles of gigantic banking institutions. Though the economic declines documented here occurred long before the current mess, the author makes the case that each of those declines (in , , , , , and ) share common factors and can teach important lessons for contemporary policymakers. Systemic declines would probably never occur if not for the huge numbers of individual consumers wanting material goods, spending beyond the realm of common sense and then defaulting on promised payments. What happens next ra
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Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry: the Untold Story of an American Legend
It still impresses me, even after my third time reading Steel Drivin' Man, how solid this book is. Centered on the John Henry of both reality and legend, it is a political, cultural, and social history that covers a lot of ground in under two hundred pages.
Nelson takes you along on his journey of discovering the prisoner/worker John Henry, placing the five-foot, one-inch teenager squarely in the context of the Redemption South's reliance on convict labor to expand its "railroad octopus" in the pursuit of greater speeds, efficiencies, and profits. Just as importantly, he shows how "infinitely mutable" the song and legend of John Henry have been over time. A chant/song regulating trackliners' work tempo that eventually influenced blues, country, and folk performers of various stripes, the myth of John Henry became a touchstone for Depression-er